On This Day
1876 – First day of the Constantinople Conference which resulted in agreement for political reforms in the Balkans.
The 1876–77 Constantinople Conference (Turkish: Tersane Konferansı “Shipyard Conference”, after the venue Tersane Sarayı “Shipyard Palace”) of the Great Powers (Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia) was held in Constantinople (now Istanbul)[1] from 23 December 1876 until 20 January 1877. Following the beginning of the Herzegovinian Uprising in 1875 and the April Uprising in April 1876, the Great Powers agreed on a project for political reforms in Bosnia and in the Ottoman territories with a majority-Bulgarian population.[2]
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1818 – The first performance of “Silent Night” takes place in the church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.[10]
“Silent Night” (German: “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht”) is a popular Christmas carol, composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr in the small town of Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria.[1] It was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2011.[2] The song has been recorded by many singers across many music genres. The version sung by Bing Crosby in 1935 has sold 10 million copies as a single.[3]
Born On This Day
1908 – Gertrude Bancroft, American economist (d. 1985)[10][11]
Gertrude Bancroft McNally (December 23, 1908 – January 28, 1985) was an American economist who was chief of the economic statistics section of the United States Census Bureau until 1951,[3] later associated with the Social Science Research Council,[4] and special assistant to the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.[5]
Bancroft earned a master’s degree in economics in 1934 from the University of Pennsylvania with a thesis on The effect of the War of 1812 on price relations in Philadelphia.[6] In 1958 she published the book The American Labor Force: Its Growth and Changing Composition (Wiley). This book, part of the Census Monograph Series produced by the Social Science Research Council in cooperation with the Census Bureau, analyzes the results of the 1950 United States Census and associated data to measure the growth and makeup of workers and unemployed people within the US, and discover patterns of change in which kinds of people were working and what they did between 1940 and 1950.[7]
In 1962, she was honored by the American Statistical Association by election as one of their Fellows for “distinguished service to the field of labor force statistics both in the development of objectively measurable concepts and in the promotion of public understanding of the uses and limitations of labor force data”.[8]
1895 – Marguerite Williams, American geologist (died 1991)
Marguerite Thomas Williams (born Marguerite Thomas; December 24, 1895 – August 17, 1991) was an American geologist. She was the first African American to earn a doctorate in geology in the United States.[1]
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FYI
By Joan Didion, Vogue: On Self-Respect: Joan Didion’s 1961 Essay from the Pages of Vogue
December 23, 2021
Joan Didion, author, journalist, and style icon, died today after a prolonged illness. She was 87 years old. Here, in its original layout, is Didion’s seminal essay “Self-respect: Its Source, Its Power,” which was first published in Vogue in 1961, and which was republished as “On Self-Respect” in the author’s 1968 collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Didion wrote the essay as the magazine was going to press, to fill the space left after another writer did not produce a piece on the same subject. She wrote it not to a word count or a line count, but to an exact character count.
Rare Historical Photos: Inside California Alligator Farm where kids could ride and play with alligators, 1920s
Rare Historical Photos: Robert Wadlow: The tallest man in history seen through stunning photographs, 1918-1940
AP News: The world’s best holiday lights
By Colin Marshall, Open Culture: Why “White Christmas,” “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “Let It Snow,” and Other Classic Christmas Songs Come from the 1940s
By Grace Ebert, Colossal: A Montage of 64 Portraits Reveals the Wildly Diverse Characteristics of Foxes
By Peter Grier Staff writer, Noah Robertson Staff writer, The Christian Science Monitor: Why the ’70s are a blueprint – but not a destiny – for the 2020s
By Gabrielle Bienasz, Editorial assistant, Inc.: Some Customers Just Aren’t Worth the HeadacheRyan O’Donnell and Marco DiDomenico learned how to scale Replyify in part by ditching dead weight.
Ryan O’Donnell and Marco DiDomenico know that time is money.
The pair created Cleveland-based Replyify, in 2018, to help salespeople send email campaigns, automate follow ups, and track responses. They’ve managed to grow Replyify to more than 1,500 clients and are on track to book $1 million in revenue in 2021–up from $800,000 in 2020. They owe their success in large part to a very specific customer care strategy: send difficult customers to competitors. “We’re not desperate for every piece of business that comes along,” O’Donnell says.
The founders say that managing angry or difficult customers can suck up two or three extra hours per week, “It’s almost a full day, right?” says O’Donnell; “And if you have that full day to dedicate elsewhere, then how much more could you be doing with a limited team?”
It’s an unorthodox approach, but it works for the co-founders, who essentially run Replyify by themselves. DiDomenico is a full-stack engineer, and O’Donnell, who is the sales and marketing guy, says, “It’s the perfect combination of hacker-hustler.”
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Journal of Musical Things: George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” has a news star-studded music video. This is extremely sweet.
Excellent!
By Jody Serrano, Gizmodo: Finnish Man Passes on Paying $22,600 to Replace His Tesla’s Battery, Blows Up Car Instead A Tesla repair shop told a Model S owner that replacing the battery would cost more than $22,600. He decided to stick 66 pound of dynamite on the car.
Recipes
By Winnie Khamal Macbailey, Food Talk Daily: No- Oven Easy Bread Rolls
Homemade on a Weeknight: Quick Asparagus Fries
Carrie Forrest at Clean Eating Kitchen: Slow Cooker Cabbage
By Becca, Food Talk Daily: Creamy Sweet Potato Gratin
DamnDelicious
RecipeTinEats
- Ham and cheese omelette June 2, 2023I’ve updated the way I make omelettes. This “scrambled egg” approach is easier and yields a better result without having to worry about raw egg in the middle. Today’s omelette recipe is filled with ham and cheese. Sauté your ham first! Ham and cheese omelette I used to cook omelettes using the technique whereby you... […]Nagi
- Antipasto Chickpea Salad May 31, 2023I love this chickpea salad because it involves little more than opening jars, it keeps well for days and the chickpeas keep me full for longer. It’s like an antipasto platter, in the form of a protein-laden, good-for-you meal! Antipasto Chickpea Salad Professional food writers would probably describe chickpeas as a blank canvas for flavour.... […]Nagi
wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for June 4 June 4, 2023Picture of the day View of Malecon Avenue, Havana, Cuba
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for June 3 June 3, 2023Picture of the day Amphycribral vascular bundle of a Fern Rhizome Pteridium aquilinum. Big cells with red cell wall are tracheids. They serve in the transport of water. Around the xylem there are xylem parenchyma and phloem cells. A single row layer of small cells (with red content) located circumferentially is endoderm. In the parenchyma […]
AV Club Wiki Wormhole
- With writers still on strike, AMPTP is suddenly happy to give directors a “historic” contract June 4, 2023Late last night, the Directors Guild Of America released a statement announcing that they had come to a tentative agreement with the Alliance Of Motion Picture And Television Producers (a.k.a. the AMPTP, the coalition of major movie and TV studios), calling it a “truly historic deal” that gives the DGA “major…Read more...Sam Barsanti
- What's on TV this week—The Idol, Based On A True Story, Never Have I Ever June 4, 2023Welcome to What’s On, our weekly picks of must-watch shows. Here’s what you need to watch from Sunday, June 4, to Thursday, June 8. All times are Eastern. [Note: The weekend edition of What’s On drops on Fridays.]Read more...Saloni Gajjar
- Bad Buzz: Disney lays off Lightyear director in first Pixar staff cuts in a decade June 3, 2023The director and producer of 2022 Pixar flop Lightyear have both been laid off at Disney. According to Reuters, director Angus MacLane and producer Galyn Susman, veteran Pixar employees who’d been with the company since the Toy Story and A Bug’s Life days of the 1990s, were among 75 employees cut from Pixar in recent…Read […]William Hughes
- 34 best TV shows streaming on Prime Video June 3, 2023Are you really making the most out of your Amazon Prime subscription? Sure, you’ve got paper towels and cat litter coming in like clockwork. But if you’re not regularly combing through the service’s streaming catalog, then you’re missing out on hundreds of hours of killer TV. Since getting into the original-content…Read more...The A.V. Club
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Welcome to the Stump the Bookseller blog!
Stump the Bookseller is a service offered by Loganberry Books to reconnect people to the books they love but can’t quite remember. In brief (for more detailed information see our About page), people can post their memories here, and the hivemind goes to work. After all, the collective mind of bibliophiles, readers, parents and librarians around the world is much better than just a few of us thinking. Together with these wonderful Stumper Magicians, we have a nearly 50% success rate in finding these long lost but treasured books. The more concrete the book description, the better the success rate, of course. It is a labor of love to keep it going, and there is a modest fee. Please see the How To page to find price information and details on how to submit your Book Stumper and payment.
Thanks to everyone involved to keep this forum going: our blogging team, the well-read Stumper Magicians, the many referrals, and of course to everyone who fondly remembers the wonder of books from their childhood and wants to share or revisit that wonder. Isn’t it amazing, the magic of a book?